Every year we make Easter cup cakes, and we have even sold some to family and friends in the past to help pay for a break away for ourselves. Adults and children alike love them. There are now lots more regulations about selling food, and you need to have a hygiene certificate and insurance, and so we no longer sell them, but we do enjoy having them on our table at Easter.
Teenage grandchildren prefer money as a gift rather than an egg now and so sometimes we will give Easter cup cakes with the cash to make it seem like an Easter present. These cupcakes are also good for school bake sales at this time of year, or for stalls and fetes. They can look quite professional but they are actually quite simple to make. This makes a good school holiday activity to do with children.
WHAT WILL I NEED TO MAKE EASTER CUP CAKES?
To make the cupcakes we use the recipe for Victoria sponge cake here
You will also need
1 pack of white fondant icing (I just use Aldi). Once we bought coloured fondant but found it to be sticky and not as good quality, and so now colour our own.
Food Colouring (we bought these from cake decorating shops rather than the supermarkets as they are better quality and last longer). If you buy a few primary colours you can mix them to make many more colours. I use them in other things like for making pink or mint custard, for colouring pastry mixed with vodka, for icing a birthday or Christmas cake. I have also used them to colour playdough. They last years as you only need a little bit at the end of a knife.
Butter and icing (powdered) sugar for butter icing (colour or cocoa can be added). Use half the weight of butter to the amount of icing sugar. I don’t make a lot. You can use margarine to save money but it does not taste as nice. We use disposable piping bags and a small piping nozzle (eg tip 13) to make it look tidy, but if you can not pipe butter icing you can just make the cupcakes with just fondant and I tend to stick the fondant on to the cup cake with a dab of butter cream.
Sweets like chocolate eggs if desired. We have used white bunnies, mini eggs and mini filled chocolate eggs in the past, and the gummy egg sweets.
We look on places like Pinterest for ideas. I love using the fondant to make the toppings. It is just like being a kid again playing with modelling clay. If you do buy the little tubs of colouring paste from cake decorating shops add the colour in very small amounts at a time as you do not need much. It will look like it is not enough, initially, but keep massaging it through the fondant so that it absorbs it. I literally use a little bit on the top of a knife and if it is not the colour I want, I then add some more.
Have fun and please share pictures of your cupcakes if you make them. Hopefully you are not like me and eat half the chocolate sweets!
